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Forced Out: A Unity Forum at the Crossroads of Deportation & Incarceration

Thursday April 5, 2012, 9:00AM – 4:00 PM
University of Illinois at Chicago

Workshop on intersections of detention, criminalization, and the LGBTQ experience will take place from 11:50-1:00 PM during the wrokshop session.full schedule

This city-wide forum provides a starting place for a conversation among individuals and families impacted by “mass detention.” It also gives students, activists and allies a chance to make connections across issues that are often seen as separate and even competing. By educating people about the shared logic of the prison and immigration systems, Forced Out will increase the links among affected groups and help to create a more unified voice for policy change across all communities.

One of the workshops will focus on the experiences of LGBTQ people in detention and incarceration systems. Workshops will take place from 11:50 AM to 1:00 PM. The “Resisting Criminalization of Sexuality and Gender” workshop will take place in Room 605. It is a collaboration between the Transformative Justice Law Project, the Immigrant Youth Justice League, and the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy.

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Immigrant Detainees: Alone, Unrepresented & Imprisoned
A joint conference of Rutgers School of Law–Newark, Seton Hall Law School, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, and New York University School of Law.

On the morning of Friday, February 24, I got out of bed with my usual swagger. I made a pot a coffee, a light breakfast and started getting ready for work. Still with lazy eyes, I started answering some e-mails when my phone rang. The person on the other line identified himself as an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement so I piqued up immediately (because if that doesn’t wake you up, I don’t know what else does). Continue reading →

At 11:37 a.m. on a Tuesday in October, a fight between two inmates started in the dining hall in a prison in western Oklahoma. Guards broke it up using pepper spray, and the situation returned to normal.

Or so they thought.

Minutes later, the dining hall erupted in all-out war with fists, kicks and food trays flying. Within 15 minutes, the entire facility was thrust into chaos as 600 inmates, mostly African-Americans and Hispanics associated with the Surenos prison gang, bloodied each other. Suddenly, one of the largest prison riots in California’s recent history was going down in a corrections facility a thousand miles outside the state. Continue reading →

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Private Prison Corporation Must Reveal Reports on Sexual Assault in its Facilities

By Mae White

Goal: To demand Corrections Corporation of America, the largest for-profit prison company in the country, release information regarding sexual abuse in its facilities to its shareholders.

Corrections is unfortunately a highly profitable industry in the United States. In 2010, the two largest prison companies generated over $4 billion in profit, and their CEOs each earned at least $3 million. Despite their affluence, however, American prison companies seem incapable of preventing sexual assault in their facilities. The largest for-profit prison company in the US, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), has recently come under pressure to reveal information about its efforts to reduce incidents of sexual assault.

PHOENIX – Prisoners in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections receive such grossly inadequate medical, mental health and dental care that they are in grave danger of suffering serious and preventable injury, amputation, disfigurement and even death, according to a federal class-action lawsuit filed today by a legal team led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Prison Law Office.

The lawsuit also charges that thousands of prisoners are routinely subjected to solitary confinement in windowless cells behind solid steel doors, in conditions of extreme social isolation and sensory deprivation, leading to serious physical and psychological harm. Some prisoners in solitary receive no outdoor exercise for months or years on end, and some receive only two meals a day. Continue reading →